August 2021

n TALKING INDUSTRY After Industry 4.0 comes Maintenance 4.0 The digitalisation of maintenance was the topic for the latest in the Talking Industry series of online panel discussions. Drives & Controls consultant editor Andy Pye, who chaired the session, reflects on some of the issues raised. 30 July/August 2021 www.drivesncontrols.com M aintenance may appear to be one of the most traditional and unchangeable aspects of running factories. But it, too, is moving into the digital era by using advanced digital methods to steer maintenance practices away from traditional, reactive,“fix-when-broken” regimes, towards preventive and predictive methods. This move – which has, inevitably, been dubbed Maintenance 4.0 – involves an holistic view of the relevant sources of data, and ways to connect, collect and analyse it. It was the subject of the latest Talking IndustryWebinar, which brought together an international panel of experts from four countries – the US, France, the Netherlands as well as the UK. The discussion spanned four sub-topics: n maintenance industry“megatrends; n whether Covid-19 and the skills gap have accelerated the adoption of AI and automation; n collating data frommultiple sources; and n easy wins with Maintenance 4.0. Megatrends Pete Sopcik, marketing manager of Analog Devices’ OtoSense predictive maintenance business, set the scene by identifying key drivers – so-called "megatrends" – that he believes are influencing the maintenance sector. These include: n the increased use of automation in manufacturing environments due to Covid-19; n the retirement of experienced workers, creating skills gaps; n digitalisation, which is enabling new business models based on new technologies; n artificial intelligence, which is augmenting the capabilities of existing manufacturing workforces, allowing them to focus on higher value areas and to operate more efficiently; n advanced technologies that are helping to deliver higher value services; and n maintenance technologies for monitoring complex assets, which are creating opportunities for new business models and business expansion, while limiting the burden on resource-constrained environments. “We've seen a number of trends that are that are continuing to help accelerate the need for newways of performing maintenance, new ways of bringing technologies to the market,” Sopcik said.“On top of that, the loss of skills, retiring workforces and Covid, are together creating quite an opportunity – positive or negative, depending on how you want to look at it. “We've been focused for some time on providing measurement technologies that measure the performance parameters of critical machines, critical sensing inputs, and using that data to create new insights into the equipment during its operation,”he continued. “This means being able to convert that data into digital data, interpret it and then take that information and feed it back into the control systems. We see a tremendous opportunity in industrial automation generally – and specifically for maintenance. "The underlying measurement technologies have improved significantly enough to enable newways of collecting data which improve the quality of the data being collected,”Sopcik reported.“This makes it possible to understand how instruments and machines interact with each other and with the surrounding environment. You want to extract as much benefit from these machines as possible. So having that visibility into all the equipment in sync, provides that type of insight. “Covid has created a significant impact on everyone's lives,”he added.“The opportunity that we see here is that it has really accelerated the amount of adoption here for newways of performing maintenance, newways of automating. "Covid has limited the access that we have to these facilities by not being able to have people on site. So not only can we have access to our own facilities, but it allows third parties and other service providers to gain access. And on top of all that, we've had a skills gap for some time that’s starting to grow, spurred on by an ageing workforce looking to retire. Maybe Covid has helped to accelerate some of that as well. How do we capture that expertise?" Accelerating adoption The second segment of the discussion led naturally on to the extent to which Covid and skills shortages are accelerating the adoption of AI and automated methods. This section was